Horicon Day featured dunks, games, crafts, fun — and advice

North Warren High School student Alex Nuwer emerges from a dunking booth tank after sharpshooter Cole Bradley, 7, of Chester sent her plunging into the cold water with a well-aimed baseball during Horicon Day. Nuwer and a half-down other local students staffed the dunking booth for the popular community festival, held Saturday Aug. 3.
Photo by Thom Randall.

BRANT LAKE  Town board member Bob Olson sat on a perch above a tank of water in a dunking booth Saturday Aug. 3 at Horicon Day festivities.

“What a wimpy throw,” he said with a grin, taunting a man who was poised to take a second shot at a lever that would plunge him into the cold water. The next shot, the college-age man hit his mark, and Olson was drenched. Fellow board member Matt Simpson and other local celebrities had their turn serving as targets.

The booth was a featured attraction, sponsored by the North Warren High School Class of 2015. Among those staffing the booth were North Warren juniors Julianna Dewar, Phil Cooper, Nick Sapienza, Quinn Carlo, Alex Nuwer and Connor Farmer. The proceeds are to help pay for their upcoming junior prom. Hotshots of the day included Skylar McDougall, Ellie Underwood and Sarah Gaulin, the latter two Argyle youngsters who dunked one celebrity after another.

Photo by Jessica Kane

Brant Lake toddler Brautigan Zeus Flugmacher, 1&1/2, can’t conceal his pride over being allowed to sit in the driver’s seat of a Horicon Fire Department firetruck during Horicon Day activities.

A half-hour earlier, Olson had been wandering over the grounds of the Horicon Town Hall with a bullhorn, promoting various attractions of the festival — which included a display of a proposed basketball court development by oy Scout Dylan Baker, 12. The Brant Lake youth is planning to construct the court at the Horicon Community Center, if he garners enough donations.

Nearby was a booth displaying gifts and floral arrangements, representing inventory of the Lazy Moose Garden Market, which is to be opened next spring at 6499 state Rte. 8 in Brant Lake. The display attracted as many as a dozen local people at once. Teri Schuerlein, who’s developing the center as well as a nearby deli and cafe with her husband Paul.

“It’s very humbling, how the community has responded today,” she said.

Around the corner, the Brant Lake Wesleyan Church was conducting a popular ring-toss concession, as well as handing out free bottles of cold water. Nearby, fairgoers were tossing dimes into glass dishes for prizes at a concession operated by Girl Scout Troop 3151.